Byron's Babbles

Today as I was going to get feed for our dairy cows I was listening to Sirius XM Hair Nation. Remember, I was in high school in the 70’s and college in the 80’s, so I still love the hair bands today. Don’t forget, KISS, is the greatest of all! But, I have digressed… While listening, the host at the time, Keith Roth, made a great comment: “We no longer listen for understanding. We listen to respond.” This is so true and reminded me that great leaders must listen to understand. And… of course I immediately tweeted the quote – you can follow me at @ByronErnest.

The quality of our listening determines the quality of our influence, and that brings huge benefits to our organizations. Research says we only retain about 25 percent of what we hear – why? because we lack listening skills. First, and foremost, we need to all start listening to understand. The good news is that we can learn to be a better listener and significantly increase our retention. There are principles and practices that can help us be intentional, purposeful, and conscientious when listening and that will make a huge difference with the spirit of our team members.

By listening to others with an empathetic ear, by putting ourselves in their shoes, and by maintaining an open mind, we develop a culture of enthusiastic and energetic teamwork. Our conscious listening, which is listening to understand and learn, is our gift to others. I am a firm believer that if I am talking I am not learning – I think someone important said that one time and has been quoted, but I can’t remember who.

Listening is a very critical role of leadership. Listening may be the single most powerful action the leader can take. Leaders will always be under pressure to speak, but if building social fabric is important, and sustained transformation is the goal, then listening becomes the greater service.  As a leader, I am working very hard to be a convener and practice conversational leadership. Conversational leadership is a cornerstone in the effort to redefine the relationship between the ourselves and our organization’s internal and external stakeholders.

Listening needs to be the action step that replaces responding, solving, defending ourselves, and responding. Listening, understanding at a deeper level than is being expressed, is the action that enables leaders to convene great conversations. This means we have to change the nature of our listening.

If we truly want to learn to listen to understand we must become conversational leaders in all aspects of our life and work to enable authentic dialogue that makes a difference toward positive outcomes. I believe if we listen to understand more and practice conversational leadership we will find our teams don’t need a whole lot of training, new materials, or stuff in order to have productive dialogue, team meetings, or professional learning communities; they just need the focused time to talk together and discover what they already know about what they are doing and about what needs to be different.

How can we begin to cultivate both the organizational infrastructures and personal leadership capabilities that are needed to shift the trend of listening to respond to one of listening to understand?